If it takes 10,000 hours to become truly great at something, my sister and I were American Girl Doll connoisseurs. For years we would create new adventures for our dolls, from mundane school days to live broadway performances we would force our dad to film on an old camcorder. But my personal all-time favorite adventure was bungee jumping.
After hiking all the way up Mount Everest (also known as our staircase), the dolls would proceed to bungee jump off the top of the mountain. As I now reflect on its topography and shape, I’m not sure how one would logistically go about bungee jumping off the top of a mountain. But nonetheless, we would tie jump ropes around the dolls’ waists and throw them over the banister.
I was so enthralled by the freedom of dolls flying through the air that one day I told my sister I wanted to try. Seven-year-old me wanted to tie the jump rump around my waist and have my sister swing me over the banister. Memories like these make me weary to have kids of my own. My sister quickly rejected the idea and told me very bluntly that I would die.
Looking back, I’m not sure if I was more ignorant of the concept of death or the price of the dolls I was so carelessly flinging over the railing. But the coronavirus craze has brought back a familiar feeling of immortality I so stubbornly held on to over a decade ago.
You've probably seen a video of masses of students on vacation in Florida. The segment features kids who insist that nothing will ruin their spring break and plan to completely ignore all cautionary restrictions being mandated. I couldn’t help but cringe at the gross ignorance and embarrassing disregard for the severity of the situation.
As I think more about young peoples’ reactions to a worldwide epidemic, and as I spend more time holed up in my room, I wonder: how can human beings so susceptible to death still feel so immortal?
Something unique about humans is our cognitive ability to know that one day, we will die. Arthur Schopenhauer argues in his book, “On the Suffering of the World,” that animals have a privilege in not being able to foresee their own death. That humankind’s awareness of death only prolongs our suffering, whereas animals’ suffering is blissfully limited to the isolated moment of death itself.
But still, as I sit here in the middle of a pandemic, I wildly disagree. Yes, death is scary and unknown. Yes, death is perceivably far away - in fact, it is THE farthest thing away in our lives that exists. So naturally, we develop a comfortable denial, a peaceful ignorance to our inevitable end.
But what if instead, we recognized death as the very thing that gives life any meaning at all? Just as happiness needs sadness and pleasure needs pain, life relentlessly needs death.
I believe humans have a beautiful advantage in knowing our final day will come. When we confront mortality, we confront the most difficult yet important question of them all: what impact do we want to leave behind? Avoiding this confrontation is the reason we spend our days obsessing over things like money and Instagram likes. Things that simply do not matter.
Immortality is the reason I almost flung myself off the stairwell. It’s also the reason people selfishly crowded on the beach just the other day. But this feeling that we’re entitled in some magical way, that we are immune to death, is now putting others at fatal risk. Not to mention deceiving us into thinking a crazy spring break is what actually matters right now.
So rather than fear or deny it, I've tried to accept death for what it is. Somehow, confronting the darkness has made life that much brighter. Reminding myself of my very finite time here has put my struggles in perspective, my fears at ease.
If nothing else, take this pandemic as a reminder that life is fragile and so are we. Viruses can spread and meteors can hit and one day, you too will die.
But that, my friend, is only because you were fortunate enough to have lived.